There are two competing versions of former Guantanamo detainee Sami al Hajj’s story. The first, which has long been endorsed by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and many other journalists/activists, portrays Hajj as an innocent Al Jazeera journalist who was wrongly swept up in the post-9/11 world. The second, compiled by intelligence analysts at Guantanamo and other foreign governments, sees Hajj as a longtime extremist and al Qaeda member who used his job at Al Jazeera as a cover for his more nefarious activities.

A recently leaked assessment of Hajj, authored by American analysts at Guantanamo, has been used to buttress the first version of Hajj’s story. The authors of the assessment noted that Hajj was transferred to Cuba, in part, because American officials had suspicions about Al Jazeera’s “newsgathering operations in Chechnya, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, including the network’s acquisition of a video of [Osama bin Laden] and a subsequent interview with” bin Laden. (This was just one of five reasons Hajj was transferred to Guantanamo, according to the document.)